may be coming too fast. It is hard for the old
people to adjust."
For now, at least, tradition holds the upper
hand. Hamid Shah, a tall man with a classic
Pathan face, narrow and sharpened by a
hawk's bill of a nose, told me about justice in
his village. "Recently a man came at night to
the home of a married woman. Her brothers
shot him dead. Then a jirga, a council of
leaders, was convened. Of course the jirga
decided the shooting was justified."
That was not the end of it. "There also was
suspicion upon the woman. The jirga ordered
her divorced from her husband and given to
the dead man's family as a ward."
Violence Haunts Mountain Road
I met Hamid in Landi Kotal, a town in the
Khyber Pass. As avenue of conquest and bat
tleground, the Khyber ranks as the world's
most fabled mountain gateway. To me it is
simply the meanest-looking stretch of coun
try I have ever seen. Not a high pass-it
climbs only to 3,370 feet-the Khyber en
velops more than twenty miles of road in a
bitter, rocky landscape, almost treeless, with
gravelly, often dry streambeds below and
sun-blistered peaks above (pages 124-5).
The pass bristles with reminders of vio
lence: forts, picket posts atop every domi
nating crag, even concrete dragon's teeth,
planted to stop German tanks when Britain
feared a strike into India in World War II.
Many men here, as elsewhere in the tribal
area, carry guns. Perhaps, as several Pathans
lightly suggested, it is natural for a warrior
people to go around armed. Still, I wondered:
Are guns really necessary? I put the question
to a tribal leader who wore a pistol. "Why do
you Americans have the atomic bomb?" he
countered. "Is it not to keep peace in the world?
I carry a gun so no one will bother me."
He told me his family, like many in the
SPassengers on a camel train, mother and
child huddle in the nest of their belongings
- including a sleeping goat-as they cross
Waziristan. The family belongs to a nomadic
group of Pathans called powindahs. After
a spring of harvesting wheat in Punjab, the
band, in a three-mile-long caravan, passes
the town of Miram Shah (following pages)
en route to grazing land in Afghanistan.
117